Sunday, February 06, 2005

My measured reply for the call to help at PghBloggers.org

Yesterday, I was honored to be a presenter at the League of Women Voters annual seminar on how to run for office. I spoke about some third party perspectives and about the media. Within the context of my talk, I gave serious praise and endorsements to the sites and services of PghBloggers.org as well as Blogger.com.

No candidate should be without a blog these days. If you don't have a blog, you shouldn't be on the ballot. The cost is $0. The impact is huge. Blogs are more functional and easier to create than ever. Blogs should be a higher priority for a candidate than the building of a static web page.

One avenue beats blogging, but I'll save the details for another entry.

Furthermore, I'm nominating the organizers of PghBloggers.org for a civic leadership award from by The League of Women Voters. I announced my intentions from the podium to an audience of more than 50 people.

The mostly faceless organizers at the hub site, PghBloggers.org, put out a call to help a week or so ago. They have some heavy lifting to keep the site going and growing. Here is my reply to them, sent in just a moment ago.

Hi Mike and others:

I'd be happy to help you with the site, but I'm only interested in itching my own itches. That is the way of the world in open-source, collaborative projects. Perhaps you've realized this fact of life by now.

I'm interested in putting an eVote interface onto this venture. True democracy. It is going to be a wild ride, if you choose to step out of the box.

We could meet and talk about this. We could meet at my office on the South Side or at an associate's office in Carrick -- as he has a high-tech firm. You'll be impressed either way. Or, you can give me the green-light and I'll just dive in with gusto. That calls for "trust."

Mike and I talked a bit about the ideas at the second blog fest. I was there when there were about ten others.